About & methods

What this is

The Texas Promise Tracker compares what Texas officials said they would do with what they did: every statewide official, all of Texas's members of Congress, the Texas Legislature, and county and city officials in counties where research is switched on. Every promise, rating, milestone, donor row, foreign-link lead and vote on this site links to the source it came from.

One standard for every party

• The same rules apply to every official, whatever their party. The rules are enforced in code, not by judgment calls.
• Every promise needs a source link. New promises start as Not yet rated.
• Any rating other than Not yet rated must cite at least one piece of evidence with a link for that promise.
• Ratings are never overwritten. A new rating adds a row and marks the old one superseded, so the full history stays visible.
• When the evidence is clear, the rating follows it. We don't split the difference to look balanced.
• Nothing is guessed. If something can't be verified, it stays Not yet rated or at the last verified step.

Ratings and the kept rate

Statuses: Kept, In progress, Compromised/partial, Broken, Blocked by others, Not yet rated.

Kept rate = Kept / rated, where rated = Kept, Compromised/partial, Broken, or Blocked by others. In progress is shown separately and does not count toward the rate, so filing bills alone doesn't earn credit. Officials need 3 or more rated promises to be ranked. Fewer get a LOW SAMPLE badge and are listed unranked.

Promise progress

Each promise moves through these steps: Stated → Bill filed → Out of committee → Passed one chamber → Passed both/signed → Funded & in effect. Each step needs a dated source, such as a bill page, a roll call, or a budget or effective-date line, and steps are never edited. The daily checkup can move a promise up one step when a linked bill moves. Downgrades to Broken or Blocked are flagged for human review and never applied automatically. A promise with the official's own deadline shows Overdue once that date passes. One with no milestone activity for 6 months shows Stalled. Credit flags mark a vote against the promise, or a measure that passed without the official's vote or sponsorship.

Money

Itemized contributions come from the FEC (raw electronic filings and bulk files) for federal officials, and from the Texas Ethics Commission bulk export for statewide officials and legislators. Names, employers and occupations are shown exactly as filed. Memo rows, like earmark conduits, joint-fundraising attributions and transfers between affiliated accounts, are stored but never summed. Refunds are subtracted per donor. Each load is checked against the official totals.

Federal law does not require campaigns to itemize donors whose contributions aggregate $200 or less per election cycle; those donors are not listed here and appear only as the unitemized total.

Foreign-link leads: leads, not accusations

Contributions from foreign nationals, directly or through others, are illegal in U.S. federal elections (52 U.S.C. 30121) and in Texas elections. These flags are LEADS TO CHECK, NOT ACCUSATIONS: U.S. citizens abroad may give legally; PACs of U.S. subsidiaries are legal when funded by U.S. employees and run by U.S. persons; FARA name matches are possible matches only until a person confirms identity. Same rules for every party.

Flags: foreign address, with citizenship not stated; an employer that is a foreign government or foreign state-owned company; PACs of U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-headquartered companies, from a curated list; and name matches against DOJ FARA registrations active during the cycle. A FARA hit counts as a "possible match" only when the name also agrees on city/state or employer. Weaker name-only hits are marked weak and left out of the leaderboard count. See 52 U.S.C. 30121.

Positions and flips

Federal roll calls come from clerk.house.gov and senate.gov, and members are matched by Bioguide ID or a unique name. A candidate flip is opposite substantive votes on the same measure, or a vote against an earlier dated statement. Each one is labeled a possible genuine reversal, an amended/different bill, or a procedural difference, which isn't counted. Flips stay candidates until a person reviews them. Texas Legislature journal votes aren't loaded yet, and no votes are inferred.

Rosters, districts and the map

Rosters come from clerk.house.gov, senate.gov, capitol.texas.gov, senate.texas.gov and the official statewide office sites. Party for legislators comes from Open States, a community-run source, and is labeled that way. District-to-county coverage comes from Texas Legislative Council "Districts by County" reports. County boundaries come from the U.S. Census cartographic boundary file (2023, 1:5M). County research is switched on county by county, and county and city officials are only added for Active counties.

API

Every page on this site is public, and each official's donor list can be downloaded as CSV from their page. The JSON API under /api/v1 is used by the tracker's own research tools and needs a token. Updates go through the same history-preserving rules.